


Defiant

by 28ghosts



Series: drift space nine [1]
Category: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-12
Updated: 2018-04-12
Packaged: 2019-04-22 03:12:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14299530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/28ghosts/pseuds/28ghosts
Summary: Pacific Rim fusion. The first time that Jadzia Dax and Benjamin Sisko drift.





	Defiant

“Have you tried her out yet?” comes a voice behind him.

Sisko glances over his shoulder to see Dax, hands folded behind her back, striding towards him. Her gaze is fixed on the viewscreen, where the Defiant sits attached to the station. A marvel of engineering. In hibernation mode, she could pass for just another extension of the station rather than a Jaeger. But Sisko has seen the plans, knows how the arms unfurl first, then the legs, how her subroutines are sent to shift her away from the station before allowing her pilots access to thrusters. Wouldn’t do to destroy the station she was meant to defend by firing up too early, would it?

“I haven’t. Disappointed I can’t give you the details?”

“I’m just glad you didn’t get a chance to give the Defiant a spin before I got here,” Dax says. And then she looks mock-shocked, voice going low. “Don’t tell me you had a different drift partner in mind, Benjamin.”

He feels himself grin, despite his best intentions. Curzon Dax spoke the same way when he knew what he wanted. Intention and suggestion rolled up into every aspect of his voice, especially the deliberate sway of pitch. “I’m scheduled to run compatibility tests with Chief O’Brien and yourself, as you damned well know.”

Dax wrinkles her nose in displeasure. “Oh, who needs tests when we’ve got the real thing on hand?”

“You’re sure?”

Dax rolls her eyes.

Sisko taps his combadge and says, “Sisko to Engineering.”

-

The chief doesn’t approve but grants his permission, so long as it’s him supervising. “Protocol is to wait ‘til you’ve formally evaluated compatibility, s’all I’m saying. If this goes horribly wrong, it’s on the record that I objected.”

“I respect your concerns, Chief O’Brien, but we’ve actually done this before,” says Dax.

Sisko tries to hide a smile at O’Brien’s pained expression. “Quite a few times, actually. How many would you say?”

“Oh… Forty or fifty? At least. I’m probably guessing on the low end.”

“Not recently, though.”

Dax sighs theatrically, even as the mechanical embrace of the suit surrounds her. “You’re right about that, Benjamin. Last time was what… Six, seven years ago?”

“Before you got too old and infirm to keep at it,” Sisko concurrs.

“Alright, alright.” O’Brien is watching closely as one of his ensigns straps Sisko into his own mechanical suit. “Far be it from me to tell you what to do, Commander. Initiating launch sequence.”

The ensign steps back, and the suit wraps itself around Sisko automatically. He holds his jaw down pliantly as the air supply mechanism routes its way into him, and the gel-wrapper contours itself to his body, and finally the strange cold-solid feeling of inurement gel surrounding him.

He had nearly panicked the first time he Drifted in a Jaeger, but now the whole process is soothing. He barely hears O’Brien say, “Initiating Drift.”

-

For a moment, Sisko wonders: was Dax wrong?

Things have changed since he drifted with Dax last. As if something in him doesn’t want the Drift to work, his subconscious hauls it all up. It’s the last damned thing he wants to live through again, after having to show it to the Prophets, and it’s the last damned thing he wants to put a friend through.

It’s entirely possible that they can’t drift anymore. That Jadzia’s former memories, before joining, will clash against his from the years since he last drifted.

In the re-lived memory, it’s Dax to pull him away from Jennifer’s body. “I’m so sorry, Benjamin,” she says. “But you need to come with me.”

“We’re drifting,” he says, coming back to himself.

“Not very well, not yet,” she says. And she swats his shoulder. “Come on.”

-

Through the audio, O’Brien’s voice, unexpected: “Fully synchronized. Disengaging mooring clamps.”

The Defiant tips away from the station. She moves slowly at first, using only the barest of impulse power. The Jaeger’s onboard computer gradually increases the thruster power before finally yielding full control to the pilots.

It happens more suddenly than Sisko remembered. His vision is the Defiant’s vision; his vision is Dax’s vision. They are the two of them in the black of space, looking back at the station, the wormhole dim behind it. It’s beautiful.

No use trying to hide from Dax his discomfort with it all. Being called Emissary, and being taken up by the Prophets without a choice.

No use Dax trying to hide the Jadzia-memories. Her uncertainty after Curzon had dismissed her from the Academy and her terror as the symbiont integrated. The nervousness that Sisko wouldn’t see her as Dax but as Jadzia–

None of it matters. He sees Dax; Dax sees him. They let their Jaeger spin through empty space for a moment.

And then Dax says, through the Drift, let’s see what this Jaeger can do.

Together, they move.


End file.
